Blog — Melody Woolford Coaching

My Journey Off Wine - The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Twenty months ago I stopped drinking (October 2018). No one would have called me an alcoholic back then, but I felt like an over-drinker. I’d generally have 1-2 full glasses on weekdays and 2-3 on weekends. At the same time, my body was screaming at me with almost daily tension headaches or migraines.

I managed my headaches by practicing yoga in the mornings, jogging, eating healthy, downloading with girlfriends, hiking in nature, and escaping from the city when I could. Let’s just say I developed a really high pain threshold over time.

Mental Health, Thought ManagementMelody WoolfordMay 20, 2020Thoughts, Emotions, Alcohol, Wine, Drinking, Overdrinking

Thoughts That Sustain Me As A Parent

Some of us have partners or kids who do notice all our hard work and this certainly makes life a little easier, but most of the time they are busy surviving their own hectic schedules (even more so now with the extra stresses of COVID-19). If only they would say “thank you” more often and recognize our heroic efforts, THEN we’d feel better, appreciated or at the very least be less angry. Sound familiar to anyone?

But here’s the hard and liberating truth. Other people can’t affect our feelings. We are responsible for our own feelings. It’s our job to feel better if that’s what we want.

Relationships, Thought Management, Mental HealthMelody WoolfordMay 12, 2020Thoughts, Emotions

Spring Cleaning For Your Brain

Today I want to talk about our minds. Just like we regularly clean, organize and declutter our homes of things we no longer need, we need to do the same for our minds.

Our minds have upwards of sixty thousand thoughts per day. Most of them run subconsciously in the background unnoticed because they are repetitive and efficient. Some are positive but many are negative and don’t serve us.

Left unexamined many of us will tend to think they are true. We’ll think them over and over until they become ingrained beliefs in our minds.

Thought Management, Mental HealthMelody WoolfordMay 5, 2020Thoughts

The Embarrassing Reveal of Tracking 48 Hours of My Time

Last week I tracked how I spent my time for 48 hours in intervals of 10 minutes in preparation for a time management workshop I ran this morning for a group of employees at a global social enterprise start-up. I had asked them to do the same exercise, so I figured I should do it myself! I try to do this exercise every few months to gain insight into my schedule and habits. Normally, I recommend tracking your schedule for seven days (especially if it is your first time), but I knew no one would do it so I went for two days! 😉 Personally, I wanted to see if I was spending my time in alignment with my top five time priorities - areas of my life I’ve identified as most important to allocate my most valuable resource to, my time.

Time Management, Work ProductivityMelody WoolfordApril 28, 2020Thought, Thoughts

Three Ingredients To Creating Healthy Boundaries

Many people think boundaries are for controlling other people’s behavior when in fact they are created as a guide for ourselves to help us delineate where our emotional and physical boundaries begin and end. It is a way of “drawing a circle” around our behavior and ourselves. Boundaries are amazing tools for self-care and enhanced intimacy with loved ones when used in a healthy manner.

Relationships, Mental Health, Work ProductivityMelody WoolfordApril 20, 2020

Instruction Manuals For Loved Ones Bring Suffering

Starting to feel a bit neurotic from being stuck inside with your family?

How many of you are writing “instruction manuals” for how your loved ones should behave so you can feel better during this COVID-19 quarantine? 🤣

I’m certainly tempted to. I’d love for my kids’ rooms to be spotless instead of a collection of dirty dishes and clothes. I wish my husband would massage my sore lower back and take his two computer monitors back to his office downtown. And please God, someone tell our adorable cat to stop shedding so much hair so I don’t have to vacuum daily and start cuddling with me instead. 😝If everyone did this I’d regain a sense of cleanliness and serenity in my home.

Mental Health, Relationships, Thought ManagementMelody WoolfordApril 13, 2020Thought, Feelings

Give Equal Airtime To Best Case Scenarios

In attempt to see things through a positive lens, I am choosing to believe that this global shared experience will bring the world together. It will help highlight our shared humanity, how interconnected we are, and thus our shared responsibility to take care of our planet and each other. So much beauty will come out of that awareness. And I am thinking about what role I will play in making this happen in my communities. What skillsets do I have to enable this vision?

Mental Health, Thought ManagementMelody WoolfordApril 6, 2020Thoughts

Life Isn't Canceled!

Are you waiting for this whole COVID-19 "mess" to go away so you can go back to your life again?

Do you feel like you are in a prison cell with your hands tied?

"One way I’m doing this is considering…what I would be doing now if I came to Earth for the first time right now and this was apparently the way things were on Earth, that nothing was wrong, that nothing had to change..."

Mental HealthMelody WoolfordApril 1, 2020Thoughts

How Answering These 5 Questions Can Boost Your Daily Productivity

Feeling productive? Meeting your goals with flying colors? If not, try doing a daily evaluation of what worked and what didn’t and watch your productivity soar!

My productivity took a little hit the last couple weeks with the influx of three cavemen into my sacred home-office domain thanks to COVID-17. 😉Asking myself five question every day last week helped get me back on track and boosted my productivity.

It’s Normal to Feel Worried, Anxious or Uncertain About COVID-19

Feelings are generated by your thoughts. Can you trace your feelings back to the thought that generated it? Ask yourself if it is really true. And if it is true, do you want to continue thinking the thought anyways? Is it serving you? The choice is yours. There is no right or wrong answer. The idea is to bring awareness to it and be intentional about your choice of thoughts. Sometimes we want to feel sad and angry. Other times we don’t. Only you know what is best for you.

Mental Health, Thought ManagementMelody WoolfordMarch 25, 2020Feelings

Seven Pro Tips For Working From Home

With most of us suddenly working from home due to COVID-19, I thought I’d share some tips I’ve learned over the last decade. May the force be with you my friends! You’ve got this. We’re all in this together. 💪🏼

We Have a Choice

The lesson of “a circumstance is neutral until we give it meaning with our thoughts” was fresh on my mind from my adventure last week in Plano, TX (see my recent blog post). So I quickly switched directions, dropped those thoughts and deliberately chose to think “I’ve got this! I know exactly what to do. I can figure this out!” This generated feelings of self-confidence and determination. It fueled me to plan my day and week, prioritize what was important and start taking action immediately. These thoughts were more likely to serve me and my family than my previous negative thoughts. There was nothing wrong with my previous thoughts, it just wasn’t taking me in the direction I wanted to head in.

Mental Health, Thought ManagementMelody WoolfordMarch 19, 2020Thoughts

Making the Best of a Bad Situation

I had just finished unpacking my suitcase at the Renaissance hotel in Plano, TX, and was about to grab some lunch when I got a text on my WhatsApp that read “Did you guys see that Brooke cancelled the Business Workshop 10 minutes ago?”

I had been looking forward to this workshop for months. I was finally going to meet Brooke Castillo in flesh and blood, the Master Coach I had studied and certified with last year. This couldn’t be happening!

Mental Health, Thought ManagementMelody WoolfordMarch 17, 2020Thoughts, Feelings

Circumstances In Our Lives Are Neutral Until We Have Thoughts About Them

It finally hit me, rather belatedly I will admit, that I was wasting my morning on something trivial. The rescheduling of our flights was a NEUTRAL circumstance until I gave it meaning with my thoughts. I was creating my own misery, not the airline. Thoughts create our feelings, not the external circumstances in our life. My thoughts about the rescheduling were ruining my morning and if I didn’t stop I would create a negative cloud over our upcoming vacation. I could continue to create drama about it or I could drop my thoughts and move on.

I decided enough negative energy had already been wasted on it.

Mental Health, Thought ManagementMelody WoolfordMarch 10, 2020Thoughts, Feelings

Are You Indulging in Overwhelm? Three Steps to Getting Out.

I swam in overwhelm when I was relaunching my career and it still crops up in my life every once in a while. But now I know the source of it and have learned how to manage it better. Thanks to life coaching I’ve come to realize that overwhelm is an indulgent emotion that doesn’t serve us in our lives. We think it comes from our long to do lists but it doesn’t. It comes from our thoughts about them. Our to do list is neutral until we give it meaning with our thoughts. Some of us will choose to think (consciously or unconsciously) “I got this...bring it on!” and others will think “This is too much...I can’t possibly do this all.” That is the difference between whether once experiences overwhelm or not. Your thoughts and how you manage them!

Three Steps to Cultivating Self-Confidence (Day 30 of 30)

Self-confidence the ability to be secure in yourself and your abilities without any evidence. It is the unshakeable faith in your ability to learn, try and not give up! It is the emotion you want to conjure up to fuel your actions when you are trying something new, like relaunching your career after taking time off to care for our kids or transitioning to a new job. (See my blog that highlights the difference between confidence and self-confidence). Thankfully, it is not a gene that some of us are predisposed to but a skill we can develop. Self-confidence is the emotion of growth that will propel you towards your dreams if you are willing to cultivate it. Below are three steps to cultivating self-confidence.

Self-Confidence is the Emotion of Growth (Day 29 of 30)

How many of you have big dreams you’d love to accomplish, if only you had the self-confidence to go after them?!

Many of you think self-confidence is an innate gift that some lucky few are born with or that you gain through lots of experience over time. The truth is self-confidence is accessible to everyone. It is a state of being that is created in your mind and you can start cultivating it right away!

Self-Doubt Is A Sign We Are Growing (Day 28 of 30)

Many of us think that there is something wrong with us when self-doubt rears its ugly head in our lives. It makes us question our capabilities, doubt our value and robs us of our dreams.

New flash: nothing could be further from the truth. Even the most successful people in the world struggle with self-doubt! (Take Serena Williams for instance! She is a world class tennis player but she still experiences self-doubt too.) It is a normal part of the human experience. The difference between those of us who move through it successfully and those who don’t is what we make it mean.

Constraint: Focusing On What Is Important (Day 27 of 30)

Constraint: a limitation or restriction we put on ourselves to simplify our lives and focus on what is most important!

It sounds easy but it can be seriously challenging to reign in our interests. FOMO anyone?!?

Many of us cringe at hearing the word constraint because we have a phobia of missing out. We have so many things we want to do (or feel like we must do). But following that calling can send many of us into overwhelm pretty quickly - a complaint I hear often from my clients.

Three Tips for Working from Home (Day 26 of 30)

Three tips for successfully working from home:

1) Get the tidying out of the way ASAP.

2) Keep refrigerator and kitchen cabinets junk food free.

3) Get out of the house at least once a day.

Lessons & Insights from 2019, Work Productivity, Time ManagementMelody WoolfordJanuary 26, 2020